DIVINE / AGONIES

for @wemultitudinous​ / SINDAY MEME

Absolutely. 

for @wemultitudinous​ // meme

The return to Coccham seems veiled now in the mists of tired memory, a blur of ships and boats mingled with the unbreakable circle of Uhtred’s arms. It took nearly a fortnight for Elfriede to return to herself. The first few days she remained in Uhtred’s rooms, hiding under his furs and drifting in and out of nightmares. Each time she awoke, finding herself surrounded by familiar things and not the sparse, cold walls of the nunnery, her heart calmed itself a little more. 

But still, in the hollow architecture of her rib cage, she knows something has nested there. It is formed differently to the distinct fear she felt in the convent, but it has none of the pleasing surety of the confidence she knew before. It feels sharp, angry, the kind of vengeance she imagines Uhtred feels when he thinks of Bebbanburg and the usurpers sitting in his home. This rage is foreign to her, and she thinks of it like a great, twining dragon wrapping itself around her bones. She speaks of it to no one, not even Uhtred. 

The certainty she knew before, her faith in the Goddess no longer comforts her. She has always been fortunate, blessed by the divine power. Everything came to her as she needed it. If this is what she needs, what Wihtwara deserves after straying so far from the power that nurtured them, she must accept it. But it doesn’t change the feeling she has, like a garden in winter that mourns without the Sun’s warmth. She has always known that Earth bound souls must fall into position as the Goddess requires, the larger picture too far beyond their realm to even grasp. 

Occasionally, Elfriede sees the links in the chain, follows it like a hound with a scent. Now, in Edward’s palace, awaiting an audience, she has the feeling all over again. It should be counterproductive, treachery at its most evil to give Edward the knowledge required to bring Wihtwara to heel. And yet, when she searches within herself for shame, or fear, she finds none. Maybe those feelings were scrubbed from her by the experience of her own brother’s trickery. Pale hands flutter down to her skirt, smoothing it out and sliding over the fabric. 

Before they left for Winchester, Elfriede employed the best seamstresses she could find. Her new wardrobe is almost as good as the one she left behind in the palace, the best wool with bolts of silk, fur trim, colours that leave her position in no doubt. It’s a source of pride that even in exile, she looks as regal as any other. Under the gauzy veil and gold fillet she wears, her hair is a tangle of braids and curls. Under Uhtred’s protection, she is free to decorate herself how she pleases. 

She spies Edward’s wife, eyes narrowing at the pinched expression so reminiscent of her brother’s wife. Fear runs through her fast as a hare, and she takes half a step backward. There are other noblemen before them, waiting their turn with the Wessex king. Doubt, like a seed, has begun to bloom. 

“Perhaps we should not do this.”

She feels Uhtred frown, feels it without looking at him from the way his hand grips her waist. Without her title, his casual touch is no more ruinous than if she were a tavern whore already. She pushes the thought away. Uhtred is no Christian, and Coccham has no priests praying for her downfall. In Edward’s palace, if Uhtred claims her as his woman, they will assume she is married. For all her own faith, the fear of Christians and their sense of shame still worries her. 

“We should.”

Uhtred’s mouth is warm near her ear, the words as solid and comforting as his presence. She aches to lean in to him, to pretend she hasn’t the iron will to do this. She could have manipulated Uhtred into doing all of this for her, stayed in Coccham with Aethelstan and pretended it was not her place. But they both know this is her vengeance, and she must dole it out. Like the old ways dictate, the one who passes the sentence must be prepared to swing the executioner’s sword. 

“What if Goderic has beaten us here? What if there is already some plan in motion to stop us?” 

She twists slightly to face Uhtred. The palace at Winchester is foreign to her, and she imagines this is how Uhtred felt walking into the vipers pit she used to call home. It’s unsettling, her mind imagining a thousand ways they will end up imprisoned all over again. She shivers. Like Icarus, she is heading ever closer to the Sun. The fall is coming, she feels it creeping at the edge of her consciousness, an awful premonition of doom like the ragnarok Uhtred believes in. 

“Who’s going to stop us, hm?”

Uhtred grips her shoulders, his bright blue eyes taking up her field of vision. Like a shifting ocean, all the shades of blue mingle there. She calms her breathing, eyes set on his as though he is the centre of her world. The tension in his face relaxes, a soft crinkle entering the corners of his eyes. He straightens his arms, his grip loosening slightly. He turns her slightly, first this way and then the other. This is the first opportunity to speak to Edward all season, and there is no representative from Wihtwara among the other nobles. Logic dictates that they have been quick enough, that their plan will continue unimpeded. 

Uhtred draws her close again. “Nobody.”

She nods, whispering it back to him. They will meet with Edward and she will begin something that will change the home she will never see again. Setting it all in motion is the final step to her freedom from her brother. Under Edward’s thumb, Goderic will have no power over her. She would be better protected as Uhtred’s wife, and the thought stings as it always has since they left the convent. 

It was not the dream she had as a child, but her time at Coccham had softened her heart to the idea of marriage - at least, in a specific sense, with Uhtred. For all her transient fury at the appearances of their behaviour, she has no regrets. A life as Lady of Coccham could be pleasant, safe. And she could guide Uhtred to retake Bebbanburg, and her position then would better suit her birth. But such things seem to be beyond the scope of her path, and though it pangs to think of a future that cannot be, Elfriede is beginning to heal that hurt. 

She wishes she could press her forehead to Uhtred’s, to feel the bond between them that ties as closely as any Christian ceremony. She need not say the words to anyone else; she knows it for herself, and contents herself with that. 

for @wemultitudinous​ / SINDAY MEME

So this kind of links in to this post. Sex is important to Elfriede as an expression of divine fertility, the end and beginning of all things in the natural world, so along with the human enjoyment there’s a spiritual element to sex for her. This means that her favourite part of sex depends on if you;re looking at it from an experiential point of view or a spiritual point of view. 

As a woman, her favourite part of sex is the anticipation, the moment just before a kiss or anything else, the heightened awareness of her body and her partner. She has lived so long in isolation in court, that the moment of anticipation for touch thrills her. It’s always why she enjoys teasing, and gentle touches. Despite her personal faith, she lives in a Christian kingdom under the eye of watchful priests. The feeling of doing something that isn’t necessarily spoken about and the risk taking associated with it definitely ramps up the eroticism for her, which is why she loves it. 

for @wemultitudinous​ / SINDAY MEME

Elfriede is very isolated in the court of Wihtwara, so really any semi-intimate touch has a strong effect on her. It’s very novel, and if someone is close enough to her to touch her then the likelihood is that she likes them to some extent. Specifically, someone braiding her hair. She’s done it herself for around ten years, so if someone braids or unbraids her hair it really does a lot for her in terms of getting her in the mood. 

To watch Elfriede’s face light up when she sees Aethelstan is one of his great delights. He has seen it before—when he plays a good move in a game, or answers a question well, or even when she catches sight of him unexpectedly playing in the garden, or swinging a practice sword at Finan.

There had been a fondness growing in him for the boy even before Elfriede had come along, but somehow she has taken that fondness and let it grow threefold, until it feels almost as though he is building a family again. Another chance at the life that was taken from him. It’s a hopeless dream, of course, a convenient fiction moment to moment that cannot last, for so many reasons. Still, he settles into it nevertheless, laughing low at her joy.

“You hear that?” he asks Aethelstan, brow raised and amusement warm in his voice, fanning out in front of him in a fog as it hits the cold air. “Lady Elfriede will not be so easily intimidated.”

“Nor will I,” Aethelstan says, cheeks flushed with determination and the cold and exhilaration. He’s steady enough on his feet as he stands, for all that he has no more experience on the ice than Elfriede. Aethelstan is only a child, and Elfriede is far from it, but Uhtred sees in them something kindred out here. A discovery of freedom over something that, to him, is so ordinary. 

“Oh,” Uhtred says, turning back to Elfriede with mock seriousness. “Nor will he.”

Aethelstan begins to move his feet, skates slipping without propelling him forward until he remembers what Finan has taught him, how skating is different from simply walking on the ice. Uhtred presses a hand to the small of Elfriede’s back, nudging her leg with his own. 

“One foot at a time,” he tells her with a grin. “He may be smaller, but he is faster.”

He keeps his hands on her as they begin to push themselves forward, watching her feet just as much as he watches her face. She is beautiful out here, in the stark light that scatters itself over her, reflected from the white snow and the grey.

Uhtred’s leg against hers reminds her of an afternoon weeks ago, the storm hammering down against Uhtred’s hall and all of them sheltering around the fire. After a few hours playing board games and telling stories, a sense of restlessness settled around them. Elfriede had tried to teach Aethelstan a little harp music, but the mood in the hall was too turbulent for such focused study. 

With a great sigh, she had asked the boy to help her clear some floor space. “Dancing!” Even now she can imagine herself in the warm glow of the fire, clapping her hands together and ordering Uhtred and his men to their feet for a dance lesson. 

Amongst much grumbling and peacocking, Elfriede had at least managed to get them looking a little more precise in the foot work. Uhtred, still, managed to cross his feet over at the wrong moment, and she had laughed as hard as any, nudging his leg with hers. “Left, Uhtred! Left! Left!” 

The memory draws a wider smile from her, tinged with something steadfastly unnameable. She allows herself this unquestioning childish freedom and happiness, for once. 

“A challenge well met! But we will defeat you, Young Sir!” She calls to Aethelstan across the ice, hesitantly following him. 

Even in jest, out on the ice, there is something in her certainty that speaks to the woman she has been. If there were any true challenge to her, she would meet it without any outward show of fear. Surety sits as happily around her shoulders as amusement. 

She is grateful for the sturdy, safe presence of Uhtred by her side. Her feet follow the pattern he shows her, concentration only a little frayed at the edges by the heat of his body and the joyful giggles Aethelstan trails in front of them. 

She is quick to answer. Perhaps it ought to be a credit to her, the determined care she holds for her homeland like a bright-burning torch. To Finan, it is only a twist of the knife that will inevitably fall. Her loyalties do not lie here, with his Lord. She will leave, and with her she will take something of him.

And what is loyalty to a place? A town may change or burn, it may be ruled by one man or another. Does the loyalty hold then? When does somewhere you once knew become somewhere altogether unfamiliar? When is home not your home?

He has never returned to the island of his birth, and does not much intend to. Loyalty, as he sees it, is better place in a person. A place cannot fight for you the way you may fight for it.

“What is right,” he repeats. “I’ll not ask right for who.”

Such grand and sweeping ideals! Surely such things are admirable in theory, but how long can they stand in the real world? 

“Tell me—what do you think of Uhtred as Lord of Coccham?” he asks. “You’ve been here long enough to see the way he treats his farmers, those who make a living from his land. Does he live up to this rightness you speak of?”  

She knows Finan assumes she speaks of what is right for her, but she is dictated to by her faith at every turn. Her mind turns over the winter stores before summer’s dusk creeps closer to the afternoon. Every thought is examined through the lens of the land. Wihtwara prospers, even while its Lady lives in isolation, shrouded by secrets. But duty is always silent, hidden from those it benefits until they suffer without it. 

And Uhtred is loyal to people, though he holds none of the love for Coccham that Elfriede has for her island home. She watches Finan’s face, the emotions moving across his brow, the shape of his mouth. 

“What is right nearly always prefers the many over the individual,” she holds back the anger that could so easily slip into her words. 

With her jewels and fine manners, her education and her lineage, she knows that many mistake her for a spoiled princess. Finan has a half-view of her, her loyalty questionable because he cannot understand the mechanism of it. 

FAITH AND SEXUALITY A follow up to this post: x

Elfriede worships a fertility Goddess, and as such believes that the expression of sexual desire and energy is a sacred ritual for which the Goddess is present in both partners. She sees no ‘sin’ in sleeping with a person solely for pleasure; in fact, this is a celebration of the divine sexual energy and fertility. Sexuality in all its forms is important and dignified, as important to her faith as the eucharist in Christianity. Whether sex happens between man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, or multiple partners, it is still a celebration of fertility and a rite that honours the Goddess. 

However, Elfriede lives in a Christian court and is bound by perception. Generations ago, it was accepted that people would take lovers and that a marriage represented a loyalty and bond that strengthened a sexual union. Under Christian rule, such a thing would be impossible. Because of the precarity of her position and her fear of downfall, Elfriede has remained a virgin. It helps that she has never found a man or woman she considers worthy of celebrating the holy rite of fertility with. 

Elfriede considers herself heterosexual, but is actually bisexual. This dissonance arises from the time she lives in. She assumes that if she were to make a lifelong commitment that isn’t her duty to Wihtwara, it would be to a man in marriage as that’s the only other viable option. However, if she believed that the Goddess sent a woman to her bed she would accept it and would probably enjoy herself equally as much as if it were a man.